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Beautiful but Wrong: Hipparchus on Aratus’ Phaenomena and their Ancient Reception 

Aratus’ Phaenomena (ca. 270 BCE), a poem about constellations, enjoyed an enormous success in antiquity. In this talk I will focus on the reception that this poem had among ancient commentators, translators and editors, with a focus on Hipparchus’ Exegesis of the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus (more generally known as the Commentary on Aratus’ Phaenomena). Hipparchus’ work is a polemical commentary aimed at Aratus’ Phaenomena and his scientific source, Eudoxus. The analysis of some examples of Hipparchus’ criticism on Aratus will outline the development of astronomy in the Hellenistic period, while also raising some important questions about the best way to communicate science. The analysis of other two examples of the later reception of Aratus’ Phaenomena in the Roman and Byzantine times will show how such questions remained important through the centuries—and why they are still important today.

Francesca Schironi is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. She has published on Hellenistic scholarship in scholia and papyri, and on Aristarchus of Samothrace (The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad, Ann Arbor 2018). Her current main research interest is Greek science, especially Hellenistic astronomy. After working as a PI of a grant from the National Science Foundation named “the Aratus Project”, which produced an online edition, translation, and commentary of all the exegetical material on Aratus, she is now preparing an edition with translation and commentary of Hipparchus’ Exegesis of the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus as well as (in collaboration with Prof. Alex Jones, ISAW) an edition, translation and commentary of P.Paris 1 (the so-called Ars Eudoxi), a Hellenistic handbook of astronomy.